Aerospace and military applications often provide unique challenges to design and manufacturing. The nature of these applications often requires limited run and small-lot productions that result in high cost because of the small quantity of individualized assemblies. Part cost can be extremely expensive due to the cost of tooling and long lead-time associated with developing and fabricating the tooling. If these costs are associated with initial build, they are even more prevalent in dealing with replacement parts for aging aircraft and military applications.
Replacement parts for aging aircraft and other systems commonly arise where the tooling that produced the original parts is no longer in existence. Additionally, the parts “as designed” may not in fact interface correctly into the existing systems. When this situation arises, a complete redesign of part layout and tooling may be required at considerable expense. In addition, where original tooling is no longer available, redevelopment and fabrication of tooling is often required. This can result in undesirable costs associate with supply of the replacement parts. Also, on occasion, it may be necessary to build more parts than are actually needed to help amortize the costs of the tooling. This, however, can result in large inventory costs that counter the cost savings associated with the larger production runs.
What is needed is a cost effective and productive method of supplying replacement parts in limited runs without the negative costs associated with the redevelopment of specialized tooling. Additionally, it would be highly desirable to have a method of supplying replacement parts that addressed the problems associated with in-service parts no longer matching original design specifications. If such a system were developed it would eliminate the costs associated with specialized tooling, long lead time development, and large inventory.